Make School Lunches Great Again

America, we have a diabetes epidemic, the seventh leading cause of death, that is spreading like waistlines… er… wildfire. The American Diabetes Association tells us that almost 10% of the population has diabetes in one form or another and almost 90 million Americans over 18 are in a “pre-diabetes” cohort. Bad eating habits and lack of exercise are cited as the principal cause. In 2010, the Healthy, Hunger-free Act (HHFA) brought schools, food producers, parents and children to face the sugary, fat-laden diets that start young and evolve into the habits that generate diabetes and obesity. School districts accepting federal aid for their lunch programs must accept standards aimed at improving food quality and nutrition. Many school districts have already prioritized healthy school lunches without federal prodding, and where those programs are operational, childhood obesity has in fact declined.

Did someone say “obesity”? The government’s Centers for Disease Control have watched overall obesity rates steadily climb, particularly over the past two decades until the numbers reflect that over 36% of adult Americans are clinically obese. With about $200 billion of additional medical costs associated with treatments necessitated because of obesity, our healthcare system is severely strained. But what’s even more frightening is the increase in childhood obesity. The CDC tells us that 32% of children 2 to 19 are overweight and that 17% are obese. A BMI (body mass index, a height/weight ratio) of over 30 is obese, over 40 severely obese and between 25 and 30 is overweight.

Enter a rather chubby Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue (left), a former veterinarian who rose to become Governor of Georgia before being asked to join the Trump cabinet. Normally, the appearance and weight of a government official should not matter, but where the subject is bad childhood eating habits leading to diabetes and obesity, and where that official is in charge of the program that should promote healthy eating habits… it really does. Among the rules and regulations that the Trump administration is trying to abolish are those concerning the encouragement of those sugary, overly salty and/or fat-laden categories of school lunch fare.

“On a sweltering [Atlanta] morning in July, Sonny Perdue, the newly minted secretary of agriculture, strode across the stage of a convention hall here packed with 7,000 members of the School Nutrition Association, who had gathered for their annual conference.

“After reminiscing about the cinnamon rolls baked by the lunchroom ladies of his youth, he delivered a rousing defense of school food-service workers who were unhappy with some of the sweeping changes made by the Obama administration. The amounts of fat, sugar and salt were drastically reduced. Portion sizes shrank. Lunch trays had to hold more fruits and vegetables. Snacks and food sold for fund-raising had to be healthier.

“‘Your dedication and creativity was being stifled,’ Mr. Perdue said. ‘You were forced to focus your attention on strict, inflexible rules handed down from Washington. Even worse, you experienced firsthand that the rules were failing.’

“Mr. Perdue then outlined how his department was loosening some of those rules. He finished with a folksy story about a child who asked whether Mr. Perdue could make school lunches great again.

“Some in the audience cheered. Some walked out. School food was not going to escape the sharp political divisions that began to simmer in the Obama years and have been laid bare by the election of President Trump.” New York Times, September 5^th. Somehow, healthy food in school lunches is now part of a left-wing plot; the Trump administration successfully has politicized food?!

Those regulations/school lunch requirements are stifling business and individual free choice. Even as Republicans are railing about the high costs the government is being asked to bear in some form of affordable healthcare – saying we just cannot afford to provide such social amenities as part of growing government programs (they want to shrink these programs) – they take positions to increase those annual healthcare costs with stupid, laissez-faire school lunch programs that let kids stuff their beaks without parental controls being present. As any state-by-state examination will prove (see above map), the obesity rates in states that carried Donald Trump to the White House have seriously higher numbers than the average for the nation.

Perdue has begun to make minor changes in federal HHFA requirements – allowing school districts greater freedom in applying for exemptions, allowing more fat content in milk products and according some leeway in salt content – but has promised more significant changes to come. “Still, by most accounts, school lunches in America are better than they have been in decades. Cooking from scratch is on the rise, salad bars have been added to tens of thousands of schools and a federally supported farm-to-school program is operating in 42,500 schools.” NY Times.

There’s even been talk about cutting federal support for such school lunch programs as inconsistent with the GOP notions of fiscal conservatism. Why should such a non-partisan reality – school lunch – have to be subject to political polarization? Is there really a debate as to why too much sugar and fat in a young diet, in any diet, is unhealthy? It’s a medical fact, not an alternative fact.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is getting close to absurd, this ever-escalating need to attach a political valence to every single facet of life; does everything have to be an expression of political preference?